On Dialogue

[minorannoyance]

putting this here for adam in particular but i'd be interested in what everyone else thinks.

Comments

[_lyra_b]

I enjoyed reading this very much, although I must admit I had to concentrate more than I'm used to doing lately. (It was a good excercise for getting ready for school reading assignments since classes started last Thursday.)

I really only had one serious argument with Bohm's discourse - the part about "Knowing that there is a distinction between what can and cannot be solved is a useful tool in the individual’s quest to observe and relay information in the world." I was bothered by the fact that he seems to be saying if a problem seems too big to be solved just forget about it. I was trying to figure out why this troubled me and just today I was listening to "Speaking of Faith" on NPR today and found my asnwer.

The guest was saying that even though we can't solve a world problem by ourselves we can try and fix what's in our own personal world around us. That made a lot of sense and it seems to sum up how I felt about Bohm's reasoning.

Thanks for sharing your paper.

[minorannoyance]

I have an inclination to say that Bohm isn't necessarily advocating not solving larger issues, but that some things can't be fixed because they don't have a logical solution. The distinction between problem and paradox is tricky because it requires really looking into something and determining if it even makes sense.

I think nationalism is an excellent example of a paradox; as people, we are capable of compassion and generally would agree that killing other people is wrong, but as a nation, people willingly suspend their beliefs for "the better good", ie The Patriot Act, Japanese Internment Camps, The Holocaust.

The solution is not to the problem, per se, but to recognize the contradiction of the two ideas. If enough people saw it for what it was, instead of trying to "fix" a societal problem, then it would be possible to suspend the paradox instead of perpetuating it.

[_lyra_b]

But how can you 'suspend' world hunger or ozone depletion or racial/religious prejudice or a myriad of other things that are enormous beyond one person's capability? I think it sounds good as a philosophy but not as a practical matter. Perhaps I don't properly comprehend his meaning.

I guess I will slog on trying to recycle and reduce waste and whatever little thing I can fix in my small world.